GEORGE WUERTHNER—Collaboration is always a one-way street. It is about reducing the areas protected as wilderness. It is a philosophy of “splitting the baby.” As King Solomon recognized, if you truly love a child (or a wild place), you cannot cut the baby in half and get anything that is alive.
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JOHN R. HALL—It’s dog eat dog out there, as they say. Survival of the fittest, strongest, smartest, most voracious, and greediest determines the fate of our tiny blue sphere, and has likely been repeated, on a zillion planets within the unfathomable predatory universe, since the beginning of time (if indeed time had a beginning).
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Tilford cites a litany of sobering statistics showing just how profligate Americans have been in using and abusing natural resources. For example, between 1900 and 1989 U.S. population tripled while its use of raw materials grew by a factor of 17. “With less than 5 percent of world population, the U.S. uses one-third of the world’s paper, a quarter of the world’s oil, 23 percent of the coal, 27 percent of the aluminum, and 19 percent of the copper,” he reports. “Our per capita use of energy, metals, minerals, forest products, fish, grains, meat, and even fresh water dwarfs that of people living in the developing world.”
He adds that the U.S. ranks highest in most consumer categories by a considerable margin, even among industrial nations. -
KENNETH SURIN—ScoMo’s unsuccessful strategy has been to play-down the severity of the crisis (completely in line with his indifference to climate-change), and to restrict himself to sporadic public appearances in the hope that this will be just enough to convince Aussies he cares for their well-being. He’s failed on both scores. Public opinion is now strongly opposed to climate-change denialism.
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JAMES COGAN—On January 2, however, Morrison was brought face-to-face with the mass popular anger that is burgeoning over the inaction and indifference of his government and the entire political establishment towards the bushfire catastrophe. Working class residents in the fire-devastated town of Cobargo refused to shake his hand, shouted abuse and demanded that he leave. The encounter in Cobargo revealed the state of class relations in Australia. The fire crisis is triggering the type of shift in popular consciousness that has led to mass struggles and protests in country after country—from France and North Africa to Chile and India—demanding the removal of governments and an end to the relentless attacks on the social position of the working class. Trust in the official establishment is collapsing.
